Various types of adhesive coated materials are known. An example of an adhesive coated material is that typically used for a label or decal. The adhesive coating on the label or decal may be, for example, a hot melt, an emulsion, or a silicone material. The adhesive material may be used to effect adherence of the label or decal in response to application of pressure between the label or decal and an object onto which it is to be adhered.
Sheet material, such as sheets of paper or plastic-like material supporting adhesive coated labels sometimes are fed through laser printers and/or other printing devices. The laser printer, for example, usually grabs the sheet material and pulls it through the printer as information is printed on the labels. Sometimes the adhesive material on the sheet material will get on the rollers of the printer and will cause damage to the rollers and/or to other equipment of the printer. Another problem is jamming of the printer, especially of a laser printer, which causes a loss of material and lost production and operator time. For example, usually the leading edge of the sheet material is grabbed by pinch rollers and is pulled through the printer; and the pinch effect can cause the adhesive material to ooze from between the support sheet and label sheet of the sheet material and damage the pinch rollers and/or other parts of the printer. This effect is accentuated by the application of heat in the laser printer. Similar effect can occur at other parts of the sheet material and especially at edges thereof. Such label sheet material or label stock is manufactured as relatively narrow or wide webs, and in the latter or both cases the manufactured material may be subsequently cut to form sheets, say of 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches in size, A4 size, or some other size. For example, a roll of web material may have a width that is several times the width of the intended finished sheets, and the web may be cut down across the width thereof into several sheets. Adhesive material at the edges of the finished cut sheets may cause the aforementioned printer damage. The aforesaid problems also may occur in other printers, non-limiting examples being ink jet printers, pin printers, bubble printers, etc.
It would be desirable to avoid the aforementioned damage to such printer equipment and the like.
A technique to smooth a coating for uniformity across the surface of a moving web has used air flow from an air knife. The air knife has a nozzle that extends across the width of the web and blows a wide stream of air against the web to smooth the coating. Various techniques have been used to avoid nonuniformity in flow across the width of the web and to remove and/or to capture excess coating material which may drop from the web or become entrained in the flow from the air knife.
Also, techniques have been used mechanically to scrape against the surface of a web to remove adhesive material from the web as the web is moved past and against the scraper blade.
Various mechanical devices have been used to remove adhesive material from a moving web, and those have required substantial coarse and fine adjustments which require substantial time and reduce production.
The prior techniques for removing adhesive material from a moving web to effect a smoothing action (or in a smoothing fashion) have been able only to remove material along a path in the machine direction (also referred to as the direction of web travel during manufacturing of the web). However, such techniques have not been able to selectively reduce adhesive coat weight in the cross direction or transverse direction relative to the machine direction.